KA-BLOOM!

The northern United States continues to recoil from the torrid, brutal union of Old Man Winter and Mother Nature, their frisky freaking casing the upper states in ice and heaps of snow, even as we in Georgia see the daily-greening buds on trees and blooms beneath them, notice the birds are singing and the bees are trying to have sex with them (as is my understanding of the subject).Every calendar box crossed brings more color and verdant riot streetside, a thrill for our morning run commutes: to see it change incrementally; to anticipate the full-blown riot of color and chaos of which we are on the cusp and another handful of warm days will produce! It is, for us, nigh; for the north: nein.So I present for your enjoyment a sampling of our calmer climate, now springing forward, not to tease but to remind you it is for you soon soon soon, and when it is: splendidly so! If part of run commuting is experiencing the change and world about you, let this serve as reminder that before long you, too, will doff tights and long johns, shed those parkas and softshells, and run through green fields, your bold and bare feet impervious to grass’ blades.If you do feel this is a tease, recall that Atlanta has scant weeks in which to revel in this weather, before hardwoods blow their wad upon the city and their pollen blankets all surfaces in a bilious yellow inch, smothering us in their effluvia. The rains will come and bring relief to asthmatics and runners’ labored breathing, but will mix the urban forest’s particulate ejaculate into a monochromatically foul paste.Too, our spring is composed of equal parts tank tops and tornadoes, leisurely bike rides and torrential rains. Then Helios will turn his horrid gaze upon us, our temples and necks and armpits sweat-darkened for the next half-year; the dew point absurdly high, and nowhere for that sweat to go but down down down.Hello, Vancouver! What’s up, New York! Hei, Finland! We are all ready for such growth and renewal, to bust out split-shorts and grill hot dogs, asparagus, and kebabs, to chase fireflies and wake to our window screens’ inability to filter baby birds’ chirps from the morning.

So whether your weather is already fair or, for not much longer, frosty, if this hit you as a tease or its intent as fueling anticipation, if you are in spring or the tail end of winter, we can all find common ground in knowing, unlike this autumnal stalwart, it is far too early for, or time to give up the ghost on, fall.